Karen’s baking notes: The instructions did not specify how long to make the logs, but I calculated that a 6-inch rectangular log would offer enough cookies for a prescribed yield of 31/2 dozen sandwich cookies. I forgot to put the green food coloring in the mint filling. They still tasted minty.

Cookies made her a cover girl

New York City gets plugged as the magazine publishing capital of the country. But Iowa commands its own consumer magazine empire, starting in 1902 when Edwin Thomas Meredith, who would later become secretary of agriculture, debuted Successful Farming.

(Twenty years later, the Meredith Corp. added Better Homes and Gardens to its portfolio.)

Successful Farming mostly served male readers, since back in those days, most farmers were men. But it reserved a few pages in each issue for stories appealing to rural homemakers, meaning women.

Once or twice a year, the Successful Homemaking section moved to the front of the magazine and took hold of the cover.

December 1957 was one of those times, and Marcie Ver Ploeg, then a single college freshman known as Marcena Christian, was the Successful Farming’s cover girl, and her family’s favorite cookie recipes were the cover story.

“We did not subscribe to women’s magazines (such as Better Homes and Gardens). We did not watch TV either. But we did subscribe to Farm Journal and Successful Farming,” recalls the mostly retired food marketing consultant, who moved to the Rochester area in the late 1960s when her husband began working for Kodak.

Ver Ploeg’s family had a farm in Iowa’s Black Hawk County that specialized in purebred Duroc show hogs. While her dad and four brother took care of the fields and animals, the young Marcena and her mother took care of the house and cooked “hearty food for farm boys.” They always made extra, as they lived on a busy road and there were always people stopping in and staying for supper.

One of those extra mouths belonged to Jim Borcherding, a youth assistant for Iowa State College Cooperative Extension who was coaching 4-H youngsters, including Ver Ploeg’s brother, in livestock judging at the Christian family farm.

Borcherding later became an editor at Successful Farming, and when, in an editorial meeting it was decided that the magazine should profile a farm girl baking cookies, he knew exactly who to suggest.

Ver Ploeg was flown to Chicago — her first time on an airplane — for the cover shoot inside a showroom kitchen at the Windy City’s sprawling Merchandise Mart.

The cookie recipes Ver Ploeg gave to the magazine “all got tweaked in the test kitchen.”

As she remembers, the Cocoa-Mint Christmas Cookies, for example, were never made as a sandwich cookie at her house, but had frosting drizzled on the top.

A professional food stylist made the cookies for the shoot.

“I wish I knew the name of that food stylist. ... I had no idea I would be doing this later on in my career. I was in awe of her shelves and cupboards and pantries,” Ver Ploeg says.